Current wireless cellular systems are designed to serve user terminals and their applications, in order to allow the continuous streaming of data (e.g., voice and/or video) during a communications session. Additionally, communications networks may employ both unicast transmissions and multicast transmissions in order to provide data streams to the mobile terminals. Unicast transmissions may be defined as a one-to-one connection where data is sent to a single network destination identified by a unique address. Unicast-based media services may be used to provide a stream for a unique user being serviced by a base station. By contrast, multicast transmissions or streams deliver data to a group of destination computers or mobile devices (e.g., user equipment) simultaneously in a single transmission from a source (e.g., a base station). However, in current network resource scheduling schemes, the provisioning (i.e., preparing and equipping a network to provide services to users) of multicast streams is done independent of the provisioning of unicast streams.
The Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless communications standard uses a Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS) called eMBMS, which is a multicast interface designed to provide broadcast services for users within a cell coverage area and for a core network. eMBMS defines bearer properties and communication session characteristics based on service level requirements and radio network configurations. Bearer properties are a set of network configurations that provide special treatment to certain types of data streams, such that some types of data streams are prioritized over other types of data streams.
Bearer properties may include a minimum guaranteed bit rate (GBR), a maximum bit rate (MBR), a quality of service (QoS) class identifier (QCI), an allocation and retention priority (ARP), and other like properties. The GBR defines a minimum amount of bandwidth that is reserved by the network for a multicast stream. GBR bearers are typically used for real-time services, such as video and voice streams. The MBR is defined as the maximum allowed non-GBR throughput that may be allocated to a stream. The QCI is a value that is assigned to each data stream, which denotes a set of transport characteristics for a data stream and is used to prioritize data streams based on a level of QoS required by the data stream.
Network providers may use a policy, which may be stored in a policy database, to define the bearer properties for data streams based on required QoS parameters. In typical LTE network architectures, a policy database may be used in conjunction with a broadcast multicast-service center (BMSC) to implement the policy in order to change bearer properties for multicast streams. In order to implement a policy for bearer properties, BMSCs are typically configured to create and control communications sessions by allocating network resources for data streams based on current broadcast traffic loading and current bearer properties.
However, BMSCs and policy databases do not take into account the current unicast load characteristics or current unicast traffic in order to allocate resources for multicast traffic. As a result, a carrier (i.e., a modulated signal used for communicating between a user equipment and base station) with high unicast loading may be provisioned with a high bit rate multicast session. In such instances, the combined multicast and unicast traffic could result in congestion that causes significant unicast load balancing to be invoked by a base station across multiple carriers, which may result in inter-frequency hard handovers (i.e., where a connection is broken before or during the connection is made). Load balancing across multiple carriers due to inter-frequency hard handovers may result in dropped calls, delay, jitter, and/or other like service interruptions. Furthermore, in many instances, the mismanagement of unicast and multicast traffic may result in inefficient network resource consumption, which, over time, may lead to cell overload conditions.